


One journey

by faceofstone



Category: Myst Series
Genre: Gen, Modern Era, Yeesha stop linking away for FIVE MINUTES IN A ROW challenge, cityscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: One meeting. On the surface, the road goes on, for once, and Yeesha follows.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	One journey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notearchiver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notearchiver/gifts).



> Oh gosh, so many options, so much to say. Have a great Trick or Treat!

The glow of the store windows fades against the sunrise. It would be a crisp day of winter sun if Yeesha could only see it past the breath and chatter of the crowd, a heavy mass that towers over her like the line of buildings flanking the street.

A woman with tired eyes meets her gaze across the sidewalk. What are the odds, Yeesha thinks, of a predetermined encounter in this ebbing and flowing: one out of one, or zero and not a fraction more, there is a sense or there is none, only fleeting connections like branches cast across the void. She stares in turn. She knows nothing about the people of this city, she does not speak their tongue, cannot read their history. If there is information to infer from the cut of her jacket or the sole of her shoes, Yeesha cannot decipher it. There is, however, a heaviness to the way she carries herself that is the same across a thousand worlds. The skin under her eyes is dull and dark and it must have been so for a while, it looks as deep-set as ink. Did their burdens recognize and find each other, are they cut from the same cloth? How can it be that a weight has been lifted from Yeesha’s heart just by knowing that others, too, are worn down by lifelong wars of attrition and yet keep fighting. When the woman crosses the distance between them and takes her hand in hers like long-lost kin, Yeesha expects her to express the same recognition. She would say this in words Yeesha cannot understand, but the tone of her voice would carry it. Instead she flattens Yeesha’s palm and traces on it a spiral with her finger, starting from the thumb, going inward until she reaches the center. Then, almost reverent, she follows the length of Yeesha’s fingers, one after the other. She gives her one last nod, urgent, important, and disappears into the crowd.

A car horn blares. In a basement nearby, a piano student goes through the same five notes over and over. Yeesha’s hand is still raised half way, as if she were holding the weight of that spiral. What are the odds, she wonders, of a coincidence in a world that is filled, even littered with symbols? She brings her hand to her face, tapping the band-aid under her right eye which covers the lower end of her markings, the spiral again, open books, a bird running through the desert and it is all still there, still hidden. A small peace: some things should remain hidden. The hoodie that covers all the rest gives her a similar comfort, she pulls it further down until she can barely see past her nose, all the better with the roaring headache that has been mounting since she walked out of the hostel’s door. Too many people cross this city for every single one of them to carry their story and nurse their sorrows and mesh it all together so it floods her eyes and thoughts. Yeesha holds onto her symbols and her name: how hideous it would be to lose herself in this tide. If she is to dissolve, and she still wishes for it, on certain nights, let it be to the void, not in the chaos of so many lives woven together without purpose. There is no narrative here, no direction. Bahros are shrieking in an empty avenue that has the same tall old buildings engraved with the same geometries, the same traffic lights turning red at the same instant, the same winter sun as this one and the people here are so loud that she cannot hear it. So loud that they cannot hear a thing. How many cries lost in the noise, how many calls. She keeps walking.

The city stretches wide in all directions; this avenue cuts straight through it for miles on end. The morning haze has lifted. Far in the distance, in the gash through the buildings’ skyline where the road meets the horizon, loom blue mountains. Yeesha keeps walking, dark spot slipping through the crowd, never straying, never leaving this reality. Hours from now, she will make it out of the suffocating city. The plains will follow, bleak and just as loud. Asphalt road will turn into cobblestones, gravel, dirt, paint markings on the side of trees. The top of the blue mountains will open to the view of a new valley beyond them, crossed by new paths, and breathing for the first time Yeesha will follow them in her mind and reach the mountains beyond, and more still beyond those, hills and plains until her thoughts are back to rest in D’ni where all stories begin, and at last her steps will follow. One path, a single line, one spiral weighing on the palm of her hand. A million Ages exist within her reach and Bahros still cry out in empty worlds one breath away from her, but not today. Today a journey is made one step after the other like an uninterrupted thought and there is clarity in this continuity.


End file.
